Cas-regulation-targeting chimera enables selective and tunable control of CRISPR/Cas12a

Abstract

Abstract Selective and tunable regulation of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas12a activity enables on-demand control, yet current strategies remain hindered by nonspecific regulation and limited tunability. Inspired by proximity effect, we present a Cas-regulation-targeting chimera (CasTAC) strategy that employs CRISPR RNA (crRNA) as a proximity mediator to carry phosphorothioate regulators to interfere with catalytic or recognition domains of Cas12a and consequently suppress its activity. This crRNA-induced proximity approach can effectively eliminate nonspecific interaction between phosphorothioate regulators and proteins within complex multi-enzyme systems, thereby enabling selective control over CRISPR/Cas12a activity. Furthermore, CRISPR/Cas12a activity can be finely tuned to different inhibitory levels by varying the number of phosphorothioate regulators. The CasTAC strategy also improves nuclease resistance and single-nucleotide discrimination, offering potential advances in the sensitivity of molecular diagnostics and the accuracy of gene editing. Notably, the CasTAC balances the kinetics of nucleic acid amplification and CRISPR cleavage, facilitating efficient product accumulation and resolving compatibility issues in one-pot assays. As a proof of concept, we develop a one-pot, one-step recombinase polymerase amplification–CasTAC assay that achieves over 1000-fold higher detection sensitivity than the conventional one-pot recombinase polymerase amplification−CRISPR/Cas12a assay. The CasTAC strategy provides a versatile framework for fine–tuning Cas activity and advances CRISPR technology toward refined and context-adaptable functionality.